It was so interesting reading this, perhaps Thompson's most famous pulp nasty, just after having read his last, semi-sentimental potboiler, South of Heaven. (There's even a character in this one who drifts into town after working on the pipeline perhaps described in that much later novel!) In my review of that book, I noted how, at the end of his life, after finally having some success in film and TV, and having made some important admirers of his pulp stuff in the movie world, my feeling was that he attempted to combine a bit the grungy pulp style with the greater literary concerns of his first couple of failed "Okies in the dust bowl" serious Steinbeckian novels. There, too, I wondered how hostile Thompson must have felt toward the publishers and readers who kind of forced him, in order to survive, to write this drecky stuff, which he must have both loved (given how good he was at writing it) and, at the same time, hated, given that it wasn't really what he wanted to be writing about, or how he wanted to represent the people from his part of the country, I imagine--as a bunch of greedy psychopaths, degenerates, alcoholics, and murderers.

I think this novel answers that question. What if the protagonist is the author, driven to dumb himself down for an undeserving public, a self-repression that, in its turn, also forces him to brutally murder even the people closest to him? It makes perfect sense to me. The extra brutality and super cynicism of Thompson's pulp may well be his own working out of his frustrations with writing. In turn, of course, this intense frustration and cynicism made for the very best pulp. It's just devastating.

Possibly even better than Pop. 1280, but essentially it's the same conceit - first person, unreliable narrator, manipulating his readers in to feeling sorry for him whilst going about his immoral business, in this case lots of cold blooded murder.

Fascinating and dark, Thompson grabs you with his tale of good ol' boy Lou Ford and you don't want to be let go, even when the house is burning up around you. Ford is more intelligent than everyone around him, but he has a dark secret in his past and a sickness in his head that has forced him to remain in his small town his whole life, hiding that cunning intellect by playing the fool. He needlessly ribs people by playing at the corny buffoon act, brow beating them with such humdingers as "the way I look at it, a man doesn't get any more out of life that what he puts in to it," and "it came to me out of a clear sky - the boy is the father to the man. Just like that, the boy is the father to the man."

It's got me wondering whether half of the people I have to deal with in my bookshop are secretly psychopathic killers out to wind me up or whether they are genuinely that much of a buffoon. And that's a completely separate wondering to 'just why was I identifying with that serial killer, is it because I too am a capable of such savage and uncaring violence?'

It really makes a mockery of the hoopla surrounding Bret Easton Ellis to see such incendiary material of far superior literary quality without the bells and whistles being written so far in advance of American Psycho.

I think this works as a fine companion piece to Charles Willeford's Pick-Up, but there's a chance that after reading both in quick succession you may want to take a holiday with unicorns and rainbows and long walks on the beach, that will of course be the overdose of prescription painkillers and gallons of hard liquor working on you after you decide that life isn't worth living anymore.

Loved the writing. Loved how we saw it all from "the killer's" point of view. Not so solid on the ending. Feel like I missed something.

Excellent portrait of self-delusion and psychopathy. Probably closer to 4.5, but Thompson's characterization of Lou Ford was impeccable, as is his descriptive powers.

Second (or possibly third?) time reading this. I was far more disturbed by it than the first time through but also more impressed with Thompson's rendering of Lou. This transcends Thompson's pulp labeling. An unsettling classic.

I saw the film version a while ago, and it didn't convince me that much, even though Casey Affleck's performance was hauntingly perfect. So, when I saw this in the library, I thought I should at least take a look. What a disturbing experience that was. It was like watching a horror movie: you want to close your eyes, but you can't. I could not put this down. Fortunately this was mercifully short, a larger dose would have been way too much.

Thompson didn't get much recognition while he was still alive, which is a shame since this is in a lot of ways a more interestingly executed piece of hard-boiled literature than Candler's works. The style is concise and intense, and all the characters are in some ways unpleasant. Of course, Lou Ford is the most disturbing of them all. It doesn't matter at all that you can kind of sense the end result from the beginning, since it's interesting to follow how Ford will deal with the situation. Underneath that calm and simple exterior he's a complete psychopath. The violence itself is more unpleasant than usual, even though the scenes aren't bloodbaths. After the finale Ford is sure to haunt you for a while.

By the way, I was reading some of the critique concerning the movie, and it doesn't really make sense. The film is actually a very faithful adaptation of the book, so the critics should have taken that into consideration. Most of the violence is targeted at women, but that doesn't make the director or author misogynists. Sure, I got a bit queasy, but would it be better if no violence towards women was ever portrayed anywhere? I think the audience was just in shock, because they hadn't seen anything that realistic before. Or maybe because there aren't actually that many scenes of violence, so it feels more nauseating. The essence of the story is Ford's inner struggle and keeping everything under control. So, in second thought, I'd recommend the movie as well, since it is actually a quite stylish modern film noir. Just read the book first, you'll get more out of it.

This book is so well done it makes me feel like I'm guilty of a hundred hidden, bloody crimes. And perhaps all of you are, too. It didn't take long for me to genuinely like Lou Ford, and feel for him, that he's had to hide his intelligence and aptitude. At the same time I felt proud of his act fooling everyone so completely, at the fun of his playing into that role. At some point it occurred to me that I wasn't sharing in his fun role-playing game - he was fooling me, too. I'm not ashamed to say that point was after I finished the book. He'll get you, too. No matter how much you think you have come to understand and sympathize with a psychopath, that you're on the same side, dear reader, they are still outside the game and you are in it. Heck, you are it.